Stands a Calder Man (Calder Saga 2)

“Yeah, that’s all,” Nate replied to Ollie’s question and dug into his pocket to pay for the tobacco.

“Then I will thank you to take your tobacco and your friends, and leave the store.” The proprietor’s request was coached in polite phrases, spoken quietly but firmly. “You have been drinking, and I don’t want you creating a disturbance here or offending my other customers.”

Webb turned, not quite believing he’d heard right, but there was little respect or softness in the man’s expression. “The boys are a bit rowdy, Mr. Ellis, but they’re doing no harm.” The irritation that he’d been containing was straining to escape. “We’ve been six weeks in the saddle and come to town to do a little hurrahing. We’re not here to cause any trouble.”

“All I am asking is that you do your ‘hurrahing’ someplace else.” As Ollie Ellis observed the hardness taking over Webb’s features, he added nervously, “I hope you will leave peaceably. I should not like to have to ask the sheriff to remove you from these premises.”

“We’ll go, all right.” There was a deadly quiet in Webb’s voice. “But you’ve got a short memory, Ellis. You and all these townspeople that were here before the drylanders came. It was our trade—the cattlemen trade—that kept your businesses alive.”

“Times have changed,” the owner replied a little defensively.

“But greed hasn’t. You’ve caught the whiff of money in another man’s pocket and that’s all you can think about. Like the dog looking at his reflection in the water and seeing a bigger bone, you’ve just dropped yours, Ellis,” Webb murmured coolly. “Because my memory is longer than yours, I won’t forget this.”

“Now, see here, you’ve got no call to talk to me like that,” Ollie Ellis protested with affronted dignity. “My request was perfectly reasonable and—”

But Webb had already pivoted away from the counter, not listening to a single word. “Let’s go, boys,” he snapped to the others. Their initial, loudly voiced reluctance was silenced by the look on Webb’s hard features. They quickly trailed after him. It was Nate who supplied the explanation for their abrupt departure from the store.

“Doesn’t look like we’re welcome anyplace in this town,” one of them grumbled.

“I ain’t never stayed where I wasn’t welcomed.”

A few minutes later, the band of riders were trotting their horses out of town. They had no good times to remember, only the bad taste in their mouth.

In bed that night, Stefan made his demand on her and Lilli went to him. After he was through, she lay on her side, staring at the silver path the moonlight made into the room. The physical side of her marriage to Stefan had been a very minor part of their relationship. The act of mating was an occasional, perfunctory thing, occurring only at the initiative of Stefan. Lilli had never regarded it as an unpleasant duty as his wife, an activity to be endured. But she certainly didn’t derive the kind of satisfaction that Stefan did from it. As a matter of fact, she never had the impression that she was expected to. It didn’t occur to her that she might find some gratification from physical closeness with a man until she had felt curiously stimulated by Webb’s kiss. All her life, kisses had been mere gestures of affection. Certainly her mother had never indicated they were anything else. But her mother had died when Lilli was only thirteen. Other than her parents’, Stefan’s love was the only kind she’d ever known. She was gradually becoming aware there was another. And it was a man other than her husband who was opening her eyes to it.

So she lay in bed, conscious that her own urge to love was unquenched. It was too deeply repressed, because it was an urge for another man. She could feel her heart beat and the blood flow through her veins; yet the center of her felt dry and empty. There was so much she could give, but all those feelings and desires were going to waste. They were withering. She was suddenly frightened by the thought that they might never be used—that they’d die without ever b

eing given. She felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness.

III

Stands a Calder man,

Lonely now is he,

Turning to the land—

To the Triple C.

14

Large snowflakes drifted out of a pale gray sky that shaded into the bleak, white landscape. The air was bitter cold, nipping at the exposed areas of Webb’s face. A long wool scarf was tied over his hat and wrapped around his neck, partially raised to cover his nose and mouth. Without tipping his head, he peered upward at the December sky, looking for weather signs, while the hoary-coated black gelding buck-plunged through a snowdrift until it reached an area of wind-swept ground with only two or three inches of snow cover.

The sky had been threatening all morning and the air was brittle with the chill of an Arctic air mass. So far, the wind had remained calm, as if frozen by the icy temperature. But Webb was alert to any shift of the wind into the northeast, the lair of what the Sioux Indians called the White Wolf—a howling Arctic storm that preyed on the land. He could almost smell it in the air when he’d ridden out of the line camp that morning.

His route had taken him nearly full circle around the section of range he patrolled. All the cattle along the outlying areas Webb had drifted closer to camp and the hay stacks that would feed them when the snow became too deep for foraging. The gelding snorted, its warm breath rolling out in thick, vaporous clouds. Without turning his head, Webb glanced in the direction indicated by the pricked ears.

A cow was floundering in the snow, but her ungainly actions weren’t warranted by the depth of the snow cover in that area. The animal was obviously injured, a broken leg by the looks of it. Webb reined the black gelding toward the cow. There was an awkward attempt by the animal to elude his approach, but the white-faced cow finally halted in the snow and turned a wild and pain-filled eye on the horse and rider.

Webb stopped the gelding a few yards from the animal, not wanting to increase its panic. The left foreleg was twisted at a crazy angle, unquestionably broken. It was an older stock cow, which was some consolation. In another couple of years, she’d probably be culled from the herd anyway. The injury must have happened in the last few hours; otherwise the wolves would have gotten her by now.

“If the wolves don’t get you, the storm will.” The thick wool scarf muffled his murmured words and spilled the warmth of his breath over his face. “So I might as well end your suffering, Bossie.”

Cold-stiffened leather creaked loudly under his shifting weight as Webb swung a numbed leg out of the saddle and stepped to the snow-packed ground. His gloved fingers had trouble with the leather flap of the rifle scabbard, but he finally managed to grab the butt and pull out the rifle. He stepped in front of the gelding to face the wide-eyed cow and levered a bullet into the chamber.

Snowflakes whirled aimlessly through the silence. He hooked an arm through the tied reins before lifting the rifle butt to his shoulder. He didn’t want the gelding to spook at the explosion of a rifle shot and leave him afoot this far from camp. The gelding chanked on the metal bit as Webb sighted on the cow and squeezed the trigger.

The deafening report of the rifle shattered the stillness of the gray morning, drowning out the crunching thud of the cow crumpling to the snow. He ejected the empty shell from the chamber and walked back to the saddle to shove the rifle into the scabbard. With the flap secured over the butt, he put a boot in the stirrup and started to heft his cold-numbed body into the saddle, but the sight of the dead cow and the crimson-spattered snow stopped him.